I'm not one of those people who think you should work all weekend. Humans need time to relax, and for so many of us, weekends are our only opportunity. But if you don't want your week to suck (and you don't want your week to suck, right?), there are some things you should do.
1. Guard your weekends. Only schedule things that are important on your weekend. Your weekend entries on your planner should be open and emptier than weekly entries. If you don't need to sign up for a new on-line bank account on Saturday morning, wait until Wednesday.
Note the difference between the Monday - Friday entries (left) and the weekend entries (right).
2. Do your maintenance chores, but don't marathon everything on the weekends.
Even if you are doing a load of laundry every week night, you might still have to do a load or two on the weekend, depending on the size of your family. But unless you have absolutely no other choice, don't plan to do any major, regular chores on the weekend. Otherwise, weekends become too much work.
3. But do double up on stuff better done on weekends.
For some people, weekends are for special chores, like building a deck (not at my house), cleaning the pool (not at my house), or cleaning out the garage (I'm starting to feel like I live in a tiny, tiny house).
For me, weekends are for cooking the things that I don't have time to cook during the week. I find cooking relaxing, so it is the perfect chore to assign to Sundays. But I definitely take advantage of the extra time by cooking double or chopping extra veggies for the freezer. It's a little thing that I usually don't have time to do during the week, but that makes my life so much easier.
4. Don't take the weekend completely off. Continue to erase the evidence, or the mess will catch up with you.
5. Do get ready for Monday. It's really easy, on Sunday afternoon, to sit around and be lazy. But check your planner for Monday, load up your briefcase, tote bags, and backpacks, and make sure you have a lunch and dinner plan.
Sadly, tomorrow is Monday.
Etcetera.
This is a great post, Kristi. I think #4 about don't completely take the weekend off is important. Otherwise you'll pay dearly on Monday. It's not that big of a deal to do a quick pick-up a couple of times each weekend day and you'll be thankful you did when Monday rolls around. I know this from experience!
ReplyDeleteI wish I could abide by these suggestions. I would love to have my weekends all to myself, well, to my family But sadly, since I work full time, my weekends are the only time I have to clean and do errands. I do a load of laundry per day, and touch-up cleaning throughout the week. But everything else needs to wait until Saturday or Sunday. But it's all about time management! I need to focus more on scheduling down time on the weekends rather than running out of time and feeling like I didn't get everything in.
ReplyDelete